

ES2015, or ECMAScript 2015, is the first significant update to the language since ES5 was initially released in 2009. You'll often see ES2015 called by its original name, ES6, since it's the 6th version of ECMAScript.

For the most part, all ES2015 features are now available in modern JavaScript engines. Using Babel, however, gives us access to newer features which aren't yet, while ensuring our JavaScript runs on even more platforms. React Native uses Babel to enable ES2015 (and newer) features and ensure cross-platform consistency, so your JavaScript can run on Android, iOS, Windows, and other platforms.

# ES2015 Highlights

Let's take a look at some of the new language features we'll be using, and how they get compiled through Babel. There are a lot of language features to go through, so if you get tired, you can move on to [React Components](components), and finish up the language sections another time.
